AirVPN Vs ExpressVPN: Find Out Which One We Favor

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Do you want to stay anonymous while surfing the web? AirVPN might be the best solution for you if yes.

While anybody can declare to be unique these days, when it comes to VPN companies, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN sticks out from other VPN services because of its commitment to safeguarding user privacy. Right from the start, the AirVPN website begins with an appeal for your trust, mentioning, “A VPN based on OpenVPN and operated by activists and hacktivists in defence of net neutrality, privacy and against censorship”.While anyone can declare to be unique nowadays, when it pertains to VPN suppliers, AirVPN shows that it really is.

AirVPN Home Page

They’ve been around a long period of time, since 2010, when it was started with the aid of two lawyers and a little group of hackers and activists. The satellite communications company Iridium formerly ran it, but AirVPN took control of in November 2012. According to the owner’s listing, AirVPN, based in Perugia, is presently owned by Paolo Brini (Italy).

During the last decade, it hasn’t been dogged by security scandals like some VPNs have. Nor has it been acquired by a bigger organization either.

Throughout their About Us and Mission pages, the company’s history is explained and details the privacy projects that AirVPN has developed or supported. These consist of an online encryption tool, a net neutrality monitor, and other projects such as Tor, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and WikiLeaks.

AirVPN takes the unconventional route and breaks the mold by supplying a VPN created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

So how does AirVPN stack up against its rivals with such strong privacy credentials?

AirVPN’s Key Features

Servers

AirVPN’s network is much smaller sized than a lot of, with just 246 servers spread across 23 countries.

The majority of servers are in Europe (aside from those in the US, Canada, and Hong Kong). A minor concern here is that the absence of diversity of servers minimizes the number of international AirVPN users who may access geo-restricted services in their home country while maintaining their personal privacy.

AirVPN Servers

That stated, Air is popular for its impressive performance throughout its server network, with many nations having high-performance physical individual servers.

They utilize transparent bandwidth allocation methods to provide a precise evaluation of performance, with no overbooking or overselling. Plus, they are entirely unlimited, with no speed restrictions or time limits.

To establish a connection between your machine and their servers, they use OpenVPN and WireGuard (in beta). OpenVPN is the most safe and reputable method to create encrypted tunnels. It offers more security than the military.

Various ports and protocols are available; they use OpenVPN on the following ports: 80 TCP/UDP, 443 TCP/UDP, and 53 TCP/UDP. Every Air server directly supports OpenVPN over SSH, OpenVPN over SSL, and OpenVPN over Tor. Forget about PPTP and other hazardous protocols.

No choice is given to any protocol, application, or service when it comes down to it. Net Neutrality is maintained. Significantly, you can overcome web restrictions such as avoiding censorship, geographical limitations, and traffic shaping.

The usage is OpenVPN is a huge plus as it instantly improves users’ privacy and security and is extremely reputable. The lack of WireGuard as standard might reveal Air isn’t quite keeping up with its competitors. That stated, AirVPN says it is evaluating WireGuard, however it will not put the more recent protocol completely in place till some of its technical and privacy issues are dealt with.

AirVPN has likewise added a lot for power users and tech-savvy people who like to experiment with things.

Switching is limitless, so if you do not like one server, you can quickly change servers as often as you like.

You can keep track of the existing load on each server, any existing concerns, and a history of previous issues on AirVPN’s network status page (which opens in a brand-new tab).

There is an in-depth specifications page for AirVPN’s servers, with info like the readily available ports, protocols, DNS server details (AirVPN has its own DNS server), and the IP addresses of each VPN server’s gain access to points.

All of it is nice, but since there is no third-party audit, you need to rely on that what is being offered will work. But looking at the active community forum or the detailed open-source clients puts your mind at ease.

A nice aspect of this is that you can see what other people state about the service before registering. You don’t have to take their word for it or the word of an audit.

Just How Private Is AirVPN, & Does It Keep Logs?

When it comes to AirVPN’s no-logging policy, the company is extremely clear. Online privacy and security are the outright priority, with security from snoopers, data miners, and other entities that invade privacy. There is no individual information logged by AirVPN, which has a strong no-logging, tracking, or monitoring policy.

AirVPN does not track what you do when you’re connected to the VPN, date/time stamps, or your IP address. It only gathers non-identifiable “technical data” to keep the server running and improve services, but you can request for this details to be deleted at any time. This makes it among the most privacy-friendly VPN services.

As a result, no one can identify you online; not even your ISP can determine what kind of traffic or protocol you’re utilizing.

There’s no listening in, so you can connect to any wireless network without fretting about your computer system and the Wi-Fi hotspot spying on your information.

Even the most ruthless surveillance, censoring, throttling, and traffic shaping tactics will fail against AirVPN because your ISP and government will only see TCP or UDP communication on a single port.

They likewise state they abide by EU privacy policies which any servers outside the EU will be treated with the exact same or higher levels of privacy and information protection as those in the EU.

You can get a new IP address to conceal your IP so that nobody can utilize it to learn who you are. You’ll stay safe with the top-level security supplied.

You can still connect to an AirVPN server through OpenVPN over SSH, SSL, or Tor if your ISP or country obstructs OpenVPN.

Open-source clients and a lively community forum allow you to get a sense of what existing users are stating about the service prior to registering.

All of AirVPN’s software is open-source, which is a huge plus. This implies that anyone can look into AirVPN’s security. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, and Mullvad VPN have open-source apps, but just ProtonVPN’s apps have actually been checked by a third party.

Concerning security, AirVPN’s cryptography is perhaps the best readily available. It resembles that of some other providers, but still worth mentioning. The very first exchange uses 4096-bit RSA to attain Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) through Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Following the first key negotiation, re-keying takes place every 60 minutes, and the user can decrease this value. The primary information channel uses AES-256-CBC encryption.

When creating an account, you are not required to input any personal details, not even your real email address. That’s great since it lets you avoid leaving any sort of digital footprint. Be mindful that you won’t be able to change your account’s password if you don’t use one.

Italy, where AirVPN is based, belongs to the 5/9/14 Eyes Alliances (a group of countries that share intelligence information). But even if the federal government asked for user info, AirVPN would have absolutely nothing to provide.

Who Or What Is Eddie??

The Eddie UI is the name of AirVPN’s main open-source application, available on all major platforms and OSes, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Unfortunately, despite Eddie’s considerable ability with OpenVPN, it does not yet support WireGuard, so performance isn’t quite as good as those companies who use it as requirement.

AirVPN Eddie Overview

Establishing the app is simple, and it has all the information you need to connect to a VPN.

There are no maps or clearly indicated buttons to guide you. While it’s not difficult to get things working, it does not have the most easy to use interface, so it may be a more challenging learning curve for inexperienced users.

With Windows, there are a load of download options. There are builds for numerous operating systems (from Windows XP to Windows 11), in 32- and 64-bit flavors, and in installable or portable formats. In addition, there’s a changelog to discuss what’s new and an archive of past releases in case the most existing doesn’t work on your setup.

After introducing it, choose ‘Connect to a recommended server,’ and the app will connect to your closest area. You just click Disconnect when you’re ended up. Simple enough for anyone, however Eddie can do so much more considering that AirVPN uses more fine-tuned complete control over operations than any other VPN app we’ve seen.

AirVPN Eddie Servers List

2 crucial AirVPN features through Eddie are its auto-connect and kill switch. AirVPN permits you to connect when your computer system starts up, however you can’t choose which VPN server it will connect to; it will always connect to the one you selected last.

Although it specifies “kill switch” anywhere in the settings, AirVPN has a tab called “network lock” that does the very same thing. The difference is that AirVPN’s “network lock” stops all traffic that isn’t going through its protected tunnel. The majority of basic kill switches just do this when the VPN is on, but you can establish the “network lock” to filter your traffic at all times.

Eddie’s design is easy to understand. Along the top, there are six tabs: Overview, Servers, Countries, Speed, Stats, and Logs.

The Overview just shows the server to which you are connected, the download and upload speeds, the exit IP address, and the connection time. This is where you log into your account.

The Servers page displays all available servers in the network, in addition to detailed information about every one, such as the server’s label, area, latency in milliseconds from your area, and present users and server load. Impressive stuff!

This tab also has an amber/green signal that lets you know whether a server is recommended for you.

The Countries page shows the variety of servers available in each country at a glance, together with an indicator of server load and user numbers. Just like the Servers page, the amber/green sign is likewise revealed. Lots of servers have up to 1000 Mb/s bandwidth, while some smaller ones have a 100 Mb/s connection.

A green checkmark, a red “X,” and a blank box can be found on the right rail of the Countries tab. Highlight a country, click the green checkmark, and the servers for that country will appear on the Servers tab. This whitelist is essentially a favorites list; you may select as lots of nations as you like.

If you click the red “x”, that country will be removed, efficiently making it a blocklist/denylist. To remove the green checkmark from a country, click the empty box.

By choosing a nation, you are not right away connected to a VPN server. Connect to a server by marking it and clicking on the “sign out” icon on the right-hand side (a right-facing arrow pointing into a square bracket).

The Speed tab displays a basic throughput graph with thin plot lines. Its temporal resolution can be altered, so you can see traffic from the last 10 seconds to one day.

While the majority of apps show your present VPN server location and IP address at most. Eddie’s Stats page also reveals fine-grained details, such as the server’s location, load, current user count, protocol, port, encryption algorithm, session start time and length, IPv6 exit address, data downloaded and uploaded, and a lot more.

Power users, in particular, should value the capability to utilize a VPN with all the information they might ever want about the numerous locations, down to the variety of users on a specific server. It’s a valuable resource.

Finally, Logs is a detailed record of connections, routes, and other information.

This allows you to tweak the setup, such as whether it needs to constantly connect when opened, which protocol to utilize between UDP and TCP, and which port number. Proxies, Tor assistance, custom DNS servers, and routes can be modified.

The really proficient user can go into Advanced and Expert Mode settings, which enable, among other things, sending orders to the OpenVPN Management Interface by means of the Logs pane.

If the large function list appears scary, even if you are a VPN professional, it might be difficult to determine what particular settings do and how to get the desired results. In addition, it differs from any other service in regards to personalization.

Do not dismiss AirVPN’s Eddie just due to the fact that of its intricacy. Bear in mind that the program typically operates fine on its own, and you’ll never ever see the settings up until you search for them. If you periodically yearn for power or configurability, the app will supply it.

AirVPN Software Configurations

Suppose you do not wish to utilize Eddie. In that case, you can also set up a router or firewall to send all traffic through a VPN tunnel. This works with routers running the open-source DD-WRT and Tomato firmware and the FreeBSD-based pfSense firewall.

How Good Is AirVPN’s Mobile App?

There isn’t any VPN software for iOS, you can utilize an extremely feature-rich Android VPN app rather. This software supplies the exact same substantial configuration choices as its desktop sibling and valuable status information.

Separate pages for nation and server lists are what the Android app does not have that the desktop versions provides. Instead, you can expand a country and select a specific city on the same page. Some helpful text additions make the details more reasonable, but it’s still rather difficult to comprehend in some spots.

Android does not have as many settings as Windows. That’s not a significant critique; there are still many more than the majority of people will ever need. The software application likewise tries a little bit more to help you, with additional text subtitles to explain what each alternative does.

Speeds/Performance

Utilizing OpenVPN, the Eddie Windows app from AirVPN normally connects quickly and is ready to go in less than 10 seconds.

Online reviewers felt the connection monitoring was excellent, with the app detecting when the VPN tunnel drops, alerting us with a desktop notification, and reconnecting us in seconds.

In terms of privacy, leak tests showed that AirVPN’s Windows client didn’t have any DNS leaks, which shows that the Network Lock/Kill Switch works well.

Now let’s get to those speeds.

Since AirVPN only supports OpenVPN, it was always going to be slower than the WireGuard-equipped competition.

However, reviewers have reported speeds to be outstanding. Undoubtedly, one said there wasn’t a single country where they might complain about the speed. On the contrary, it was actually excellent overall.

While it wasn’t rather on top tier for VPNs that use WireGuard, it was still more than fast enough for most people, and circumstances like HD streaming, gaming, and video conferencing certainly won’t slow you down.

What AirVPN lacks is a wider variety of server locations. This might restrict the availability of neighboring servers for some users (which will constantly lead to better speeds). As a result, this VPN is an excellent option for many people in the United States and Europe, however maybe less so for other regions.

Streaming

Streaming the huge services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV, Hulu, HBO, BBC iPlayer, and Discovery+ has actually been a mixed bag for reviewers. Some report that AirVPN is effective enough to bypass the VPN blocks utilized by Netflix in the U.S.A., whereas others do not.

Some report that Air is pretty bad for streaming and does not work with any of the major streaming services. It appears to work with less-popular streaming apps like Peacock and Sony Crackle.

Another reviewer states services like BBC iPlayer and US Netflix seldom work, and when they do, finding the right server requires prolonged trial and error. This is probably since, unlike other service providers, AirVPN doesn’t offer servers that are optimised for accessing streaming sites.

The good news is, on AirVPN’s website, there is a list of ‘blocked websites’ that users can inspect to see if the situation with these streaming sites ever changes.

Nevertheless, streaming is certainly not an area in which AirVPN stands out, just since that’s not what the service is about, as they are more concentrated on personal privacy and security.

Does AirVPN Allow Torrenting?

Air supports P2P file-sharing on all of its servers. Simply connect to the VPN server of your choice and get going.

Plus, you can use port forwarding to improve your file-sharing performance. Numerous applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule clients, would run poorly without it, and your computer system’s shares might be inaccessible from the Internet.

File sharing has good speeds on local servers, allows port forwarding for up to 20 ports at the same time (which lets you connect to more peers for faster speeds), and works with top torrenting clients like qBitTorrent and uTorrent.

AirVPN’s integrated kill switch, activated by default, will obstruct all traffic from leaving your device if the VPN connection ever drops. That way, you will not be sending out unencrypted packets to the Web. If you are file sharing, a kill switch is really convenient, specifically if you need to leave your connection unattended.

Reviewers have revealed torrenting to be impressive, smooth running with fast download and upload speeds, and with no issues whatsoever.

AirVPN Plans & Pricing

AirVPN provides a larger range of plans than many VPNs. As standard, each plan lets you connect as much as 5 gadgets all at once, so you can connect your PC, phone, tablet, and a couple of other gadgets all at the same time.

This makes it an exceptional option for individuals who live in a family house or wish to use a VPN on a public network. While 5 really should suffice for most people, other VPN companies provide 7 or even 10 if you need more.

Pricing differs based upon the subscription length, and each plan consists of the exact same features. Most plans use good value; however, longer subscriptions provide the very best deal.

The standard pricing is in Euros. However, they use the European Central Bank to supply real-time exchange rates for those abroad, so it can be quickly converted to and paid for in the currency of your option.

The current plans available are:

Three days- EUR2

One month – EUR7

Three months – EUR15 – works out to EUR 5/month

Six months – EUR29 – works out to EUR 4.83/month

One year – EUR49 – works out to EUR 4.08/month

Two years – EUR79 – works out to EUR 3.29/month

Three years – EUR99 – works out to EUR 2.75/month

AirVPN accepts major credit cards, PayPal, Amazon Pay, and a whole load of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Doge. Lots of worldwide choices are also accepted, such as Alipay and Giropay.

AirVPN offers a three-day complimentary trial, which can be obtained by sending out a message to the support team and utilizing the discount coupon code they send you.

There’s also a 30-day money-back guarantee, as long as they have not broken the terms of service or utilized more than 5 GB of data throughout that time.

AirVPN Customer Assistance

AirVPN has a different customer assistance offering than many other VPNs. While it does not have live chat, it offers e-mail assistance and frequently asked questions (Frequently asked questions) and has an extremely active support online forum with contributors from both the service itself and the community.

Importantly, AirVPN’s e-mail support isn’t outsourced but can be a little irregular with the time it requires to get a response. That stated, the e-mail assistance is high quality, and the agents are handy and friendly, however the thorough answers can be quite technical, which may put off those new to VPNs.

AirVPN’s site has a great deal of info, including a big FAQs section that is separated by topic.

AirVPN’s community forums cover several topics, however novices will have the exact same difficulties comprehending a great deal of the tech jargon in the posts.

AirVPN Pros & Cons

Pros:

No logging Whatsoever.

Outstanding speeds with very little loss.

Unrestricted P2P enabled with Port Forwarding.

Strong security on servers and apps alike, with advanced protocols and encryption.

Network Lock/Kill Switch.

Split tunneling.

Supports Windows, Mac, Linux, mobile, and routers.

Supports Tor over VPN.

Easy app installation and use.

Many, many advanced settings and customization options in the client app.

Strong Customer Support.

Active Community Forums and Comprehensive Guides.

Great prices, especially for longer-term plans.

Optional block lists shield you from advertisements, adware, trackers, and damaging sources.

Cons:

Only fully supports OpenVPN.

Client app isn’t extremely user-friendly or pretty like other services.

Client app may overwhelm newer users.

It is extremely hit and miss with streaming services.

No native iOS or ChromeOS apps.

Possibly there are too many advanced alternatives.

Found in 14-Eyes Country.

Server numbers are reasonably low.

Rounding Things Up – Is AirVPN The Very Best Option?

The bottom line is that AirVPN is a strong, trustworthy, and safe VPN service with great pricing. It’s clearly geared towards more power and advanced users, so those brand-new to VPNs will be better served by a less, shall we say, specialized VPN service provider. Even brand-new users could do much, much worse.

While it could be challenging to use if you’re brand-new to VPNs, you’ll get much quicker speeds and much better results than many of its rival VPN rivals.

This VPN service is more focused on securing your privacy than unblocking streaming services like Netflix or Hulu when it comes down to it.

Although it may not guarantee the exact same level of personal privacy and privacy as a service like Mullvad, which assigns you a random account number and allows you to pay in cash, AirVPN is still a great choice for customers who value their privacy.

While it doesn’t hit the speed heights of a WireGuard service, performance-wise, it’s absolutely the best purely OpenVPN service out there. In addition to being an exceptional option for online filesharing.

Highly recommended!

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